There are all kinds of reasons why the post office may not be able to deliver your package today: maybe it requires a signature and you’re not home. Maybe the post office can’t get access to your apartment building, or can’t get in the gate. Or your mail carrier ran away because your home is apparently guarded by a bear. [More]

Most people occasionally need to mail packages. Most people also have jobs. The U.S. Postal Service is in financial trouble, and desperately needs our package-mailing funds. They’re not about to expand the hours that post offices are open to accommodate office workers, though, so they compromise: post office lobbies are open 24/7 and Automated Postal Centers are ready for your package-mailing needs. Blue mailboxes can only accommodate parcels up to 13 ounces, but you can drop much larger boxes in the package drop at your local post office. In theory. Dan found that this was trickier in practice, when every post office nearby had an operational postage machine, but the package drops were all locked. [More]

H. lives on a rural mail route, and her mailbox is secure, with a lock and a slot just big enough to slide letters through. When a package containing an expensive camera lens went missing recently, she learned that her mail carrier had put the package in the “parcle box.” The what? Oh, the unused but not secure mailbox on her street that some neighbor wrote “parcel box” on a long time ago. H. had no indication that her package had been placed in the box until the mailman left her a note about it. By then, the box had already been stolen. The post office, for its part, insists that the package was delivered as addressed. [More]

John Conway paid $1,300 for a lamppost and matching mailbox, but the Thiensville, WI postmaster refuses to provide service because the mailbox is on the wrong side of the street. The disputed mailbox is part of a new housing development located twenty minutes north of Milwaukee.

“I’m sort of the guy who set the pace here,” Conway said, pointing out that he and his wife are the first residents of Concord Creek. “I’m cemented in.”

The Conway’s concrete stance has the post office in a tizzy. They have refused to answer the Conway’s phone calls, and a local paper quoted one postal supervisor threatening to mark the Conway’s mail “return to sender.” A killjoy postal spokeswoman later retracted the statement, adding “We don’t do that.”